In 2023, 3.1 million people crossed the southern border with the United States, and 600,000 of them entered undetected. Joe Biden's illegal immigration crisis is real, and it is really, really growing. In this episode, we take a look at the statistics, and try to figure out what's driving the surge in illegal immigrants crossing the border, and how many of them are coming across the border without being caught by Customs and Border Patrol agents. We also look at how many illegal immigrants are being expelled from the country, and why the situation is so bad, and what it means for the future of the border patrol agency and the immigration system in general. This episode is brought to you by the Center for American Progress, and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser and Alex Blumberg. Please take a few minutes to fill out our anonymous listener survey. Have a question or suggestion for our next episode? Send us an e-mail to sws@whatiwatchedtonight.co.uk and we'll get it on the show. Thanks for listening and supporting the podcast. Music: "Goodbye" by LiQwYdU, "coming soon" by Suneaters, "hello" by Cairo Braga, "goodbye". and "good morning" by Lizzie Mae, "please go back" by Caitlin Durante, "tweet me what you think of this episode and tag me . in your stories and if you have a question, we'll answer it in the next episode of "Good morning" :) or "good afternoon! by , "todays" by ! Thank you for listening to this podcast! and , & "trying to keep us out of your day to you're listening to our podcast - your day is Monday, Tuesday, x & <3 , bye Thanks for your support, bye! Timestamps: 5:00 5:30 6:00 | 7:30 | 7:15 | 3:00 / 6:15 / 7: 8:30 / 8:40 / 9:15 9: 11:30/10:00/12: 13:15/15 / 15:00 + 16:40 17:20 / 16:30 +3:30 // 17:00 & 18:40/16:15 +5:30 & 15:40 +5 +5 21:00+
00:00:26.000So the question becomes, one, what's driving that?
00:00:30.000And two, how many of those people got in?
00:00:32.000And it's question two that answers question one.
00:00:35.000If lots of people are showing up at the border and lots of people are getting in, that of course is going to drive more people to the borders.
00:00:40.000You had 3.1 million people Showing up again at the southern border.
00:00:59.000And we don't really have an idea of how many unknown gotaways there are.
00:01:02.000The way that we know the known gotaways is because there is camera coverage of large swaths of the American border.
00:01:07.000But We don't always have Border Patrol agents who are sitting on every single camera all the time.
00:01:13.000The way that it works is that you have these border cameras and they are loaded onto essentially giant pylons and there are four of them pointed in all directions.
00:01:21.000But if you have one Border Patrol agent who's in charge of 20 cameras, there are going to be some people he doesn't see when they rush into the country.
00:01:27.000He goes for a bathroom break and suddenly that's when somebody comes through.
00:01:30.000According to the people I know at Customs and Border Protection, what you are really looking at is probably another 400,000 people who have entered undetected.
00:02:04.000It now used to happen a lot more under Title 42.
00:02:07.000Title 42 was a provision of federal law that suggested that if you were fearful that people were entering the country with disease, you could simply turn them back at the border.
00:02:16.000And that was used for several years in the aftermath of COVID-19.
00:02:30.000Those effectively speaking, were the only people who were expelled.
00:02:33.000You had about 180,000 people who were voluntary departures and 185,000 people who were expedited removals.
00:02:39.000Those would be people who had, like, criminal backgrounds, for example.
00:02:43.000So the total number of people out of 3.1 million who received a deportation order or who were expelled 870,000. But remember, Title 42 has now gone away. That
00:02:52.000means 560,000 people this year in 2024, if these numbers were to remain steady, would now enter the
00:02:58.000United States. That means that aside from Title 42, which again, was only in application
00:03:04.000temporarily, under Title 42, 565,000 people are turned away.
00:03:10.000All those people would now enter, which means a grand total of 365,000 people who are actually removed or departed voluntarily because, for example, they realized that they were going to be dinged on a criminal background check.
00:03:22.000Now, we get to the people who were added to the docket and what happened to the rest of them.
00:03:27.000So, of the people who were processed under Title 8, that was 1.9 million people.
00:03:30.000Only 365,000 of those people were actually removed.
00:03:34.000Every other person entered the United States.
00:03:59.000They claim that they are, in fact, asylees from their home countries.
00:04:04.000That they are people who cannot go back, because if they go back, they'll be killed, or they'll be persecuted, or whatever.
00:04:11.000And then, because we are not processing them, and because when we do process them, our standards are too low, we're allowing everybody into the country.
00:04:17.000So even according to this New York Times chart, you had a minimum of 2.4 million people who crossed the U.S.
00:04:26.000Now understand, by way of contrast, that during the entirety of the Trump administration, the number of border encounters during the entirety of the Trump administration was 1.6 million.
00:04:38.000You had 2.4 million people enter last year alone under Joe Biden.
00:04:43.000That is an insane number and none of those people are going away.
00:04:45.000Once people are brought into the United States and they are given a date to show up later, the vast majority of them are never going to show up later because why would they possibly show up?
00:04:51.000They've been integrated into American society.
00:04:53.000They're receiving whatever benefits they can receive.
00:04:55.000They're in California, actually real estate benefits, maybe up to and including healthcare.
00:05:00.000Why exactly would they show up for a court date where they may very well be deported if they can't prove that they have a real asylum claim?
00:05:10.000And he has done that because there were executive orders in place under Donald Trump that prevented a lot of this.
00:05:14.000Not only Title 42, but most prominently, Remain in Mexico.
00:05:17.000Remain in Mexico said that if you showed up at the border and you said, I fear to go back to my home country, the Trump administration said, okay, wait in Mexico.
00:05:26.000We have to process you, but you need to wait in Mexico.
00:05:29.000Which means you were not going to be released into the interior because there was a good shot that you actually would have to show up for your court case and then you would be rejected.
00:05:36.000And in the meantime, you can't just disappear in Chicago or New York or Atlanta or Denver or wherever.
00:05:42.000But Joe Biden got rid of that like day one.
00:05:43.000That was one of the very first things that he did was get rid of remaining Mexico.
00:05:48.000That is the reason you are seeing this vast, extraordinary increase in illegal immigration at the U.S.
00:06:00.000Well, for example, so many illegal immigrants are now arriving on the East Coast of New York that they're being stored on like football fields.
00:06:07.000And when there's bad weather, they have to be moved somewhere.
00:06:10.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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00:07:28.000And they're being brought presumably directly into The school buildings.
00:07:37.000This is what school buildings are for now.
00:07:39.000Your public resources being used to house illegal immigrants from foreign countries while kids are told they have to stay home from school and learn remote as though we're still in the middle of COVID or as though schools should have ever been closed during COVID.
00:07:49.000According to the New York Post, students at Brooklyn High School were kicked out of the classroom to make room for nearly 2,000 migrants who were evacuated from a controversial tent shelter due to a monster storm closing in on the Big Apple.
00:07:59.000The city made the move amid concerns a massive migrant tent at Floyd Bennett Field would collapse from torrential rains and gusting winds, packing them instead into the second-floor gym at James Madison High School five miles away.
00:08:09.000A local resident who identified himself only as Rob said, quote, this is effed up.
00:08:23.000A lot of them have criminal records and backgrounds we don't even know.
00:08:27.000One mom went off on the migrants as they pulled up saying, quote, And I gotta tell you, to a certain extent, I don't blame the illegal immigrants.
00:09:19.000I mean, that's a right-wing proposal which says, essentially, there is no United States.
00:09:23.000But it would make a lot of the global poor richer, wouldn't it?
00:09:26.000And it would make everybody in America poorer.
00:09:28.000Then you're doing away with the concept of a nation-state.
00:09:31.000And I don't think there's any country in the world which believes in that.
00:09:37.000No one believes that, except for apparently large swaths of the Democratic Party.
00:09:40.000So, how has Border Patrol been tasked?
00:09:42.000So, Border Patrol has been told their first priority is that once someone claims asylum, you must, as a Border Patrol agent, make direct for them, like beeline directly for them.
00:09:51.000Now, I recently went down to the border.
00:09:52.000We're gonna have a ton of material on this that is coming out.
00:09:55.000But let me tell you, the situation at the border is a full-scale disaster area.
00:09:58.000Border Patrol agents are being told not to actually police the border.
00:10:01.000They are essentially acting as a ferry service for illegal immigrants.
00:10:06.000Which is why you now have the amazing spectacle of illegal immigrants crossing the border and then sitting around and complaining that the border patrol isn't showing up fast enough like you would complain if you showed up at a hotel and the bellman didn't show up fast enough.
00:10:17.000Here is CNN highlighting illegals from China complaining about having to wait in the cold.
00:11:02.000And the answer, obviously, is because the Biden administration has made clear that this is what they are going to do.
00:11:05.000And by the way, these illegal immigrants are not wrong.
00:11:07.000The Biden administration has, in fact, made clear to Border Patrol agents that their chief function now, 90% of Border Patrol agents have been staffed on essentially busing and administrative duties.
00:11:20.000At the border, there's an actual sign in certain parts of the border where you push a button for Border Patrol help.
00:11:27.000Again, we're gonna have a ton of material that's coming out about this because it really is stunning what's happening at our southern border.
00:11:33.000But the fact that Joe Biden has opened the border wide is clear to literally everyone.
00:11:40.000Now, what's amazing is that Democrats continue to claim that Joe Biden is on top of this thing.
00:12:18.000And the numbers of folks who are presenting at the southern border seeking asylum has motivated our president, both in his first State of the Union, to call on Congress to legislatively address this and give him the powers he needs, and in the supplemental package he asked for months ago.
00:12:35.000To ask for billions of dollars to strengthen border security.
00:12:38.000We disagree between Republicans and Democrats about what policies will most likely achieve that outcome.
00:12:45.000But there is a broad awareness that the huge numbers of folks who are transiting Central America and coming through Mexico to our southern border is just not sustainable.
00:13:34.000As I mentioned yesterday, the Mexican drug cartels are making like $13 billion a year just on trafficking human beings across America's southern border.
00:13:43.000The cartels, they spec out where on the border people should cross.
00:13:47.000They know exactly where to drop people off.
00:13:49.000They literally drive up to the border in trucks, literally.
00:13:53.000They just drive up to the southern border in trucks.
00:13:55.000Mexico is a sovereign country, so Border Patrol does not have the ability to simply cross the border and do anything.
00:14:00.000They drive up in trucks loaded with hundreds of illegal immigrants and then just drop them there.
00:14:04.000That is the cartels, and they are making money off of it.
00:14:07.000And yet the Democrats are trying to facilitate all of that.
00:14:11.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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00:16:02.000The immediate need is to close the border and then figure out what the hell to do with the people here.
00:16:07.000The problem is if you unclog the court system, that is going to facilitate more illegal entry.
00:16:13.000If you unclog the system, all that means is processing more people at the border.
00:16:17.000Now he's saying that means that you'll get to more court cases faster.
00:16:19.000Yeah, but ICE isn't deporting anybody.
00:16:20.000So if people don't show up for the court cases, ICE is not going to go into their houses and then pick them up and throw them out.
00:16:26.000That is not something that Joe Biden has tasked ICE with doing.
00:16:29.000So saying that we need more administrative law judges who are going to adjudicate whether someone has a true asylum claim or not, unless they're going to do that within 72 hours, it ain't gonna happen.
00:16:38.000Any delay where people are released into the country, is going to result in those people remaining in the country.
00:16:45.000He says, we must reduce the flow to the border, which will require making immigrating into the U.S.
00:16:51.000Ian Ratner says, as Republicans have long demanded and Democrats are coming to see as necessary, our obligation under international law to provide asylum need not create chaos.
00:17:00.000For starters, we should require asylum seekers to apply in Mexico or other countries, right?
00:17:04.000This is the remain in Mexico policy that Trump attempted to do and then Biden basically killed.
00:17:10.000Also, says Ratner, we need to tighten the asylum criteria.
00:17:12.000For example, we should make a greater distinction in the asylum process between those who followed established procedures and entered the country through an established port of entry and those who crossed along our border between ports of entry.
00:17:22.000Well, no, actually what you need to do is tighten up what it means to be a person who should receive asylum.
00:17:28.000Which Ratner admits, he says, while recognizing the need for due process, we should raise the legal standard for consideration for asylum from a significant possibility that asylum would be granted to something closer to the standard used for final decisions in immigration court.
00:17:40.000We also may need to further limit the use of humanitarian parole, a program expanded by the Biden administration that allows more migrants from places like Venezuela and Nicaragua to temporarily enter the country and apply for relief.
00:17:50.000As heartbreaking as it may be, we simply cannot take every refugee from every failed state.
00:18:25.000The only reason for that is not climate change and it is not discontent south of the border.
00:18:29.000It is simply because Joe Biden is an open borders president and every single person knows it.
00:18:34.000And this issue is going to bite Joe Biden directly in the rear as it properly ought to.
00:18:40.000And meanwhile, more bad news for the Biden administration with regard to the economy.
00:18:44.000According to Axios, the global economy of the 2020s will be more bleak than the decade that preceded it, with sluggish economic activity, less trade growth, and crushing borrowing costs.
00:18:52.000This is the new warning from the World Bank on Tuesday morning.
00:18:55.000They say the global economy so far had its weakest performance in more than 30 years.
00:19:01.000Further threats from geopolitics and tightening credit conditions, quote, as the world nears the midpoint of what was intended to be a transformative decade for development, The global economy is set to rack up a sorry record by the end of 2024, according to the World Bank.
00:19:14.000Global growth is going to slow for the third consecutive year to 2.4%, down 0.2 percentage points from 2023, according to that Global Economic Prospects Report.
00:19:22.000That'd be nearly three quarters of a percentage point below the average growth rate in the 2010s, the slowest half decade of GDP growth in three decades.
00:19:31.000And it's going to get worse, because stagnation, high borrowing costs, The breakup of globalized trade thanks to a lack of American involvement in foreign policy.
00:19:41.000All of that is going to end up with a more fragmented and polarized world that is going to make things significantly more expensive for you, more difficult for you to get credit, more difficult for you to build a business.
00:19:50.000That is the future of the United States under our current economic trajectory.
00:19:53.000We'll get to more on that in a second.
00:19:55.000First, 2024 is full of unknowns right now.
00:19:57.000The one thing I know for sure, postage costs will continue to increase in the new year.
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00:20:59.000Meanwhile, the incompetence at the White House absolutely continues.
00:21:02.000We have now learned that Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, was diagnosed with prostate cancer and did not tell the President for literally weeks.
00:21:10.000According to Politico, doctors on Tuesday disclosed the reason Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was hospitalized on January 1st was due to complications from a late December surgery to treat prostate cancer, answering a major question involving the Pentagon chief's mysterious health situation, but raising further issues with how the episode was handled.
00:21:27.000This was announced yesterday by the Pentagon Press Secretary, Major General Patrick Ryder.
00:21:30.000He says the Defense Secretary was treated for prostate cancer.
00:21:32.000Now, we were told it was an elective surgery.
00:21:34.000An elective surgery does not mean an unnecessary surgery.
00:21:41.000But it seems like if the Secretary of Defense has a surgery for prostate cancer, he should probably let somebody know.
00:21:48.000Here's the Pentagon Press Secretary announcing this.
00:21:51.000This is a statement from Dr. John Maddox, Trauma Medical Director, and Dr. Gregory Chestnut, Center for Prostate Disease Research of the Mirtha Center Director at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
00:22:07.000As part of Secretary Austin's routinely recommended health screening, he has undergone regular prostate-specific antigen PSA surveillance.
00:22:16.000Changes in his laboratory evaluation in early December 2023 identified prostate cancer, which required treatment.
00:22:25.000On December 22, 2023, after consultation with his medical team, he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and underwent a minimally invasive surgical procedure called a prostatectomy to treat and cure prostate cancer.
00:22:41.000Okay, so then he says that Austin has taken responsibility for transparency issues.
00:22:47.000I'm so glad that, well, good for you that you go missing for like a full week and nobody knows, including your number two, and you've taken responsibility.
00:22:52.000Now, usually responsibility comes with, you know, like a resignation.
00:22:57.000The department recognizes the understandable concerns expressed by the public, Congress, and the news media in terms of notification timelines and DOD transparency.
00:23:06.000Now I want to underscore again that Secretary Austin has taken responsibility for the issues with transparency and the department is taking immediate steps to improve our notification procedures.
00:23:18.000Okay, well, um, you know, why was the notification procedure not already in place?
00:23:23.000Why do you need new notification procedures for?
00:23:25.000I'm getting prostate surgery, and the number two should be aware of that.
00:23:30.000She was on vacation, by the way, like, abroad.
00:23:33.000Meanwhile, John Kirby admitted yesterday, the national security spokesperson, he admitted yesterday that Joe Biden was informed yesterday about Austin's prostate cancer.
00:23:42.000You know, like, the same as we were, which is not great.
00:23:46.000The Pentagon already talked about when Uh, the Secretary was diagnosed.
00:23:53.000And as their statement said, in consultation with his doctors, he elected to have the procedure done later in the month to coincide with the holidays.
00:24:02.000And as Kareem rightly also said, the President didn't know about the diagnosis until this morning.
00:24:07.000But his reaction is, he wishes the Secretary all the best for a speedy recovery.
00:24:12.000Now, Kirby was asked, um, don't you guys have a credibility problem?
00:24:15.000So let's just say that, for example, you had a president who seems to be in the throes of dementia.
00:24:19.000Why would we possibly believe anything you guys have to say about his health situation, considering the SecDef just went completely absent for a week while having prostate cancer surgery and told no one, and no one even bothered to note it inside the administration for a week?
00:24:32.000Why should we believe anything that this administration tells us about anything ever again?
00:24:39.000I think we all recognize, and I think the Pentagon has been Very, very honest with themselves about the challenge to credibility by what has transpired here and by how hard it was for them to be fully transparent with the American people.
00:25:44.000And instead, what we get is the world on fire, an economy in the midst of stagnation, the greatest illegal immigration crisis of our lifetimes, and a president who's wandering around into walls occasionally.
00:26:40.000Because it turns out the perception of confusion on the other side leads to a belief by Iran's proxies that they can do what they want in the region.
00:26:47.000And that is raising the temperature dramatically.
00:26:50.000According to the Washington Post, quote, disagreements between the United States and Israel over the Jewish state's treatment of Palestinians emerged during Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Israel on Tuesday as leaders aired opposing views over when Palestinians can return to northern Gaza and receive tax revenue collected by Israel.
00:27:05.000Blinken told reporters, these are their revenues.
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00:28:32.000So, on the one hand, you have Tony Blinken saying the correct thing, that Hamas could have ended this October 8th simply by surrendering and giving up the hostages, and they didn't.
00:28:39.000Here was Blinken saying the right thing, and then we'll see Blinken saying many of the wrong things.
00:28:43.000I think it's very important to remember that everyone has choices to make.
00:29:26.000But then, on the other hand, he's like trying to hold Israel's arms behind its back.
00:29:30.000He suggested yesterday that the big problem is that Israel is somehow taking steps undercutting Palestinians' ability to govern themselves effectively.
00:29:52.000And you can't achieve either goal without an integrated regional approach.
00:29:57.000To make this possible, Israel must be a partner to Palestinian leaders who are willing to lead their people in living side-by-side in peace with Israel and as neighbors.
00:30:09.000And Israel must stop taking steps that undercut Palestinians' ability to govern themselves effectively.
00:30:14.000Extremist settler violence carried out with impunity, settlement expansion, demolitions, evictions, all make it harder Not easier for Israel to achieve lasting peace and security.
00:30:33.000One would be peace with the Palestinians and the other would be peace with the surrounding Arab states.
00:30:36.000So he's going back to the old John Kerry line that the only way to achieve peace in the region is to make concessions to terrorist groups.
00:30:42.000Which, of course, is a lie and the opposite of the truth.
00:30:44.000Israel was able to engage in the Abraham Accords under the Trump administration because the Trump administration made clear that economic ties with Israel in no way depended on Israel making concessions to, say, the Palestinian Authority.
00:30:56.000When he suggests that what's undercutting Palestinian self-governance is, for example, settlement expansion, why?
00:31:04.000Why is building an extra bedroom in a front?
00:31:05.000Why does that have anything to do with the fact that there has not been an election inside Palestinian governed areas for nearly two decades?
00:31:15.000I want to hear why it is that Israel allowing, for example, the expansion of Neve Daniel is somehow impacting the fact that the Palestinians refuse to elect governments that actually pick up the trash.
00:31:28.000Please explain, please explain how Israel completely abandoning the Gaza Strip, removing 8,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip.
00:31:43.000But again, the reason that he's sending these mixed signals is in the hopes that somehow this is going to buy the love of the Egyptians or the Saudis.
00:32:03.000And one of the big questions here that the United States keeps raising is, you know, there are members of the Israeli government who have said that they want Palestinians to leave Gaza.
00:32:09.000Okay, forget about that for a second, because Netanyahu says he's not going to do that.
00:32:12.000Let's talk instead about the fact that if you were living in Gaza, might you want to leave?
00:32:42.000Could it be because, historically speaking, Palestinian populations have been a destabilizing force in every region where they have entered?
00:32:49.000And could that be because they are extremely polarized?
00:32:52.000Could it be because the Palestinian population itself is extremely, extremely radical.
00:32:59.000And that doesn't mean that everybody's a terrorist, doesn't mean that people deserve to be killed.
00:33:02.000What it does mean is that if you're going to assess the security situation in the Middle East
00:33:06.000without that factor, you're completely missing the deciding factor on this issue.
00:33:10.000You're saying that Israel can only make some sort of peace with Saudi Arabia, for example,
00:33:15.000by somehow making concessions to governments that dictatorially rule radical populations.
00:33:21.000I don't even understand the logic there.
00:33:33.000Because Iran is going to continue to poke and they're going to continue to prod until they're slapped across the head by somebody.
00:33:38.000It wouldn't require the United States to quote-unquote invade Iran.
00:33:42.000It wouldn't require a full-scale war with Iran.
00:33:44.000It would require, for example, killing a bunch of Houthis along the coast in Yemen to stop them from holding up global shipping, which is something the United States actually does have a pretty strong direct interest in.
00:33:54.000But the Biden administration refuses to do any of that.
00:33:57.000Meanwhile, the question becomes on the other side of the aisle, can Donald Trump take advantage of all of this chaos or is he going to create a grease fire here on the stove of his own?
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00:34:44.000Okay, meanwhile, Now, again, you would imagine that all of this would provide fodder for a Donald Trump run.
00:34:49.000Now, let's be clear, Donald Trump isn't yet the nominee.
00:34:51.000There are some polls out of, for example, New Hampshire that are showing Nikki Haley in a pretty solid position in New Hampshire to possibly win that state.
00:34:58.000If Chris Christie, it's hilarious to me that Chris Christie continues to pretend that he's a person in this race.
00:35:02.000I mean, you want to talk about somebody who has an ego problem?
00:35:04.000I'm not sure there's ever been a politician like Chris Christie who literally just stays in races to allow the person he claims to be the greatest threat to the Republican Party to win.
00:35:13.000Like, Chris Christie being in the race in New Hampshire is so unbelievably insane.
00:35:16.000I can't even explain how dumb that is.
00:35:18.000I mean, in New Hampshire right now, the latest polling in New Hampshire from CNN and University of New Hampshire shows Trump up 39-32 on Haley.
00:35:55.000So the fact that DeSantis has done a lot of heavy on-the-ground lifting in Iowa, I think that means he outperforms his poll numbers in Iowa.
00:36:02.000But right now, obviously, Trump is up way ahead of the rest of the field.
00:36:06.000When it comes to South Carolina, I'm always surprised that they don't do more polling of South Carolina.
00:36:13.000But there has not actually been a lot of polling of South Carolina in the GOP nomination process.
00:36:18.000The polling that there has been at this point shows Trump well ahead of the field.
00:36:23.000The latest poll average from FiveThirtyEight puts Trump up at 52.9 percent, Haley at 24, and DeSantis down at like 12.7 percent.
00:36:30.000So like way ahead of the rest of the field combined.
00:36:32.000If Haley were to win New Hampshire, you would expect to see a bit of an upsurge, but Let's assume, for the sake of argument, because that's where the stats are, that Trump is the nominee.
00:36:39.000Well, the reason Trump would be the nominee and the reason that Trump presumably would be a formidable challenger to Joe Biden is because, again, people look at 2019 and they look at 2023 and they say 2019 was better than 2023.
00:36:52.000I think most sane and rational people don't blame Trump for COVID because how could you possibly do that?
00:36:59.000Jamie Dimon, he recently said that the reason that people are voting for Trump is because the economy under Donald Trump was better.
00:37:07.000I think we should stop insulting the other side, including MAGA.
00:37:10.000I've mentioned publicly many times that a lot of people voting for President Trump, not because they believe in his family values, but they look at some of the things he did.
00:38:00.000Instead, we're going to get the grease fire.
00:38:03.000So apparently Trump's camp trying to claim that he has presidential immunity for everything involving January 6.
00:38:09.000That's a weird claim because, again, there is a difference between Donald Trump's sort of political Aspirations and Donald Trump's public duties as president of the United States.
00:38:19.000And so the arguments that his lawyers are now being forced to make on behalf of presidential immunity are a little weird.
00:38:23.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the legal reckoning for Donald Trump entered a critical stretch Tuesday as a Washington federal appellate court signaled it would reject the former president's claim he's immune from prosecution on charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election.
00:38:35.000Now, by the way, this doesn't speak to the guilt or innocence here.
00:38:38.000It doesn't speak to whether it is criminal to espouse a specious legal theory, which is, in my opinion, what Donald Trump was doing for a couple of months there.
00:39:53.000It is not a threat to democracy to say the president does not have immunity for literally everything he does while he's president of the United States.
00:39:59.000The argument his lawyers are making is that the impeachment clause in the Constitution requires that the president be impeached before he is criminally tried for any sort of offense.
00:40:09.000And so the judges were like, uh, really?
00:40:11.000The question they asked was if the president of the United States, for example, Ordered Seal Team Six to assassinate his political rivals.
00:40:21.000Could he then be charged on that without being impeached?
00:40:26.000And Trump's lawyers were like, no, he'd have to be impeached first.
00:40:34.000I mean, that seems very, very difficult.
00:40:37.000The idea that somehow the President could order the murder of his political rivals, and immunity would still guard him for that.
00:40:45.000Like, murder domestic American political rivals.
00:40:50.000First of all, that would create the prospect, very obviously and easily, of the President of the United States, let's say, for example, he were impeached, and he had not yet been convicted by the Senate.
00:41:00.000So he would order SEAL Team 6 to kill everyone in the Senate who would vote for his conviction.
00:41:04.000And now there's no one left to vote for his conviction and thus criminal conviction.
00:41:07.000Again, this is this argument is not going to fly in court.
00:41:13.000The problem is, if we're taught every moment we're talking about that sort of stuff, we're not talking about the fact that Joe Biden is an awful, terrible, very not good president.
00:43:06.000Meanwhile, if Joe Biden wins at this point, and Donald Trump has been hit by his DOJ in two separate jurisdictions, in Washington, D.C.
00:43:15.000and Florida, Do you think that Donald Trump supporters are going to take that lying down?
00:43:20.000Or is his case that he has been rigged out of the election again going to be a lot more credible this time than it even was last time?
00:43:27.000Things are going to get very, very nasty in the country, which of course is why the Washington Post is running pieces like violent political threats surge as 2024 begins haunting American democracy.
00:43:37.000Now, the entire article is largely about the evils of Donald Trump supporters, but let's be clear.
00:43:42.000The threats of violence are not coming from only one side of the aisle.
00:43:47.000The amount of violence that is now being threatened against common American citizens, forget about public officials, is really significant.
00:43:55.000Because the feeling is that institutions have failed.
00:43:58.000And as the feeling that institutions are failing grows in impact, chaos comes in its wake.
00:44:03.000By the way, this is not a uniquely American problem.
00:44:05.000You're starting to see this literally all over the world.
00:44:07.000There's a feeling that the institutions of government in many Western countries have failed large swaths of the population, and people are beginning to take to the streets in response.
00:44:17.000So a big story that's been undercovered by the media has been this huge farmer protest in Berlin.
00:44:23.000According to the Associated Press, farmers blocked highway access roads in parts of Germany on Monday and snarled traffic elsewhere with their tractors, launching a week of protest against a government plan to scrap tax breaks on diesel used in agriculture.
00:44:34.000Chancellor Olaf Scholz's unpopular three-party coalition infuriated farmers last month by drawing up plans to abolish a car tax exemption for farming vehicles and diesel tax breaks.
00:44:42.000Those proposals were part of a package to fill a giant $18 billion hole in the 2024 budget.
00:44:48.000That hole in the budget is really an environmentalist hole in the budget.
00:44:52.000Here is what some of the pictures look like.
00:45:00.000Looks very much like the Canadian truckers protest over the COVID-19 shutdowns in Canada.
00:45:05.000And you're going to see this sort of stuff happening in Western capitals all over the place.
00:45:10.000The protests are under scrutiny after a group of farmers on Thursday prevented the Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck from disembarking a ferry in a small North Sea port as he returned from a personal trip to an offshore island.
00:45:20.000That incident drew condemnation from both government and opposition figures as well as the Farmers Association.
00:45:25.000There are a lot of people on the left in Germany who are deeply worried that this is going to boost the right, which of course it will.
00:45:31.000I mean, that's exactly what happened, by the way, in the Netherlands.
00:45:34.000So all over Europe, there are lots of farmers who are saying, listen, you have put your green dreams on our back.
00:45:41.000You've said that we can't farm anymore.
00:45:42.000You've put all sorts of restrictions on our use of nitrogen in the soil, for example.
00:45:46.000You have basically forced us to consolidate all of our farms and take out debt to do so, and then you've prevented us from doing the farming.
00:45:51.000This is what led to the giant Dutch nitrogen crisis, which is still rocking the country.
00:45:58.000It's happening in the Netherlands as well.
00:46:02.000All of this is just part and parcel of a broader right-wing uprising that is happening across the continent.
00:46:11.000Over in Poland, you have a true constitutional crisis that is breaking out as well.
00:46:16.000So Poland has a very weird kind of government structure.
00:46:19.000You have the prime minister who has most of the power, but you have the president who has veto power and the ability to approve governments and not approve governments.
00:46:25.000You also have two separate courts, the Supreme Court and the constitutional Court of Justice in Poland and they sort of cover different areas.
00:46:33.000Well, it turns out this division of power has led to the domination of one of those divisions by the right wing and one of those divisions by a European integrationist party led by Donald Tusk.
00:46:42.000Well, this, in turn, has led to a standoff between these two wings of the Polish government.
00:46:48.000According to Politico, in a dramatic escalation of Poland's battle to restore rule of law, the police entered the country's presidential palace on Tuesday evening and took two MPs into custody who had been hiding under the protection of the president, whose name is Andrzej Duda, after being sentenced to prison terms for abuse of power.
00:47:03.000The arrest cut to the heart of a fight between Duda and the new prime minister, Donald Tusk, who is seeking to unravel eight years of rule by the Nationalist and Conservative Law and Justice Party.
00:47:12.000Duda is aligned with PIS and still has considerable ability to thwart Tusk's attempts at reform.
00:47:17.000Basically, there were two convicted lawmakers who had been given a pardon, and Tusk is now arguing that the pardon was no good, and the president saying the pardon absolutely was good.
00:47:27.000Duda says he pardoned these two in 2015 during their trial for using fake documents in an earlier attempt to incriminate coalition allies of law and justice.
00:47:34.000They were hoping to destroy that smaller coalition party and then integrate the members, and apparently that failed and the government blew apart.
00:47:41.000In 2017, Poland's Supreme Court ruled the presidential pardon was not effective because it was granted before a final verdict in the case.
00:47:46.000So they were saying that you can't preemptively grant a pardon before somebody's been convicted in criminal court.
00:47:51.000But the Constitutional Tribunal, which is the other court which usually describes constitutional issues, they said that the pardon was in order.
00:47:58.000So now you have a battle between the Constitutional Tribunal and the Supreme Court, between the Prime Minister and the President in Poland.
00:48:05.000All of this because you basically have gridlock in Poland over the future of the country.
00:48:09.000The parliament of Poland is bicameral, but the lower house is called the Sejm.
00:48:36.000So one of the big problems in France right now is that Emmanuel Macron is deeply unpopular.
00:48:40.000The rising party is the nationalist party that is led by Marine Le Pen.
00:48:46.000Right now, the Le Pen party is leading in the polling by a significant margin.
00:48:51.000According to Politico in Europe, Macron is looking to rejuvenate his troubled second term after facing mass protests against pensions last year and bitter dissent within his own camp over an immigration bill which left his governing coalition badly bruised.
00:49:04.000Macron's pick comes as the president, he just picked a new prime minister who's like a 34 year old guy and he passed over a bunch of members of his own party in order to do so creating real discontent within his own coalition.
00:49:13.000His pick comes as the president currently holds a 30% approval rating.
00:49:17.000His coalition trails the far-right national rally by about 10 points in European election polling.
00:49:22.000So France is about to turn to the right.
00:49:23.000You have Italy, which has turned to the right.
00:49:24.000You have Germany, which is beginning to turn to the right.
00:49:26.000And you have France, which is starting to turn to the right.
00:49:28.000In fact, this is leading to crisis calls, I think good, inside the European Parliament.
00:49:32.000Because inside the European Parliament, there is a rise of right-wing parties.
00:49:38.000This means that the head of the European Parliament's Liberals, who theoretically could create sort of a center-right coalition, is outright refusing to work with any of the right-wing parties.
00:49:47.000Polls suggest that the current coalition of conservative social democrats and liberals in the European Parliament will cobble together a majority, but only just, because right and far-right groups are surging in popularity.
00:50:05.000It is quite real in terms of arithmetic.
00:50:07.000Sejourne is closed with Emmanuel Macron.
00:50:09.000He said he won't agree to work with the far right in the next European Parliament.
00:50:12.000He refused to align with the Nationalist European Conservatives and Reformist Group, the ECR, which contains the Law and Justice Party, as well as Spain's Vox Party, as well as presumably the National Rally Party in France.
00:50:24.000So they're going to try to hold the center.
00:50:27.000Because again, as all of these institutions feel like they have bit off more than they can chew and they are failing and their aspirations for a green new world order are falling apart, the backlash is very real and it's only going to grow.
00:50:41.000Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.